Center Stage
by ncfan
Summary: I used to be so beautiful. [Spoilers for EP7.]


Spoilers for EP7. I own nothing.

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><p>I used to be so beautiful.<p>

My words, they amuse you? I did not intend them as a joke. I do not speak jokes, not anymore. Once, I enjoyed them, enjoyed jokes and pranks as much as any mischievous spirit, but I was a different person, back then. I was still Beatrice, then.

What is beauty without life? What is a pretty face and graceful body without a spark beneath the flesh? When one comments upon an old, faded painting as beautiful, they do so without feeling moved. They see the beauty, but only in a distant way. It is the same with a doll, however large and lifelike it may be. The doll can be beautiful, but its beauty is worthless without life. I am just a doll, taken out of the closet after too many years in the dark and the dust. I am just a corpse, reanimated for a few hours of entertainment. I died long ago. You cannot help me.

But once; oh, once! Once, long ago, it was different.

I was born the creation of Yasuda Sayo, a sad, lonely young girl without a single human friend. The day I was born as Lady Beatrice was the day my predecessor was relegated to the same fate that would someday befall me. She was shown more mercy than I, allowed to live on as my friend and eventually becoming known as Gaap. Still, I wonder sometimes if that version of her that was Lady Beatrice, a Witch instead of a demoness, doesn't exist somewhere, adrift in the celestial sea I was dredged up from.

I was born to be the Golden Witch, the Witch of the Forest, the ruler of Rokkenjima's night. My mystique was modeled on both the Witch rumored to have bestowed Kinzo with all of his gold, and the spirit-like Witch who was supposed to life in the dense Rokkenjima forest. I was created as an outlet for a powerless young girl to feel powerful. As the creation of Yasuda Sayo, I played pranks on the servants who did not do proper glorification of my name. It was rumored that there was once a servant who had fallen from the cliffs to her death. I was not responsible, but I took credit anyways. I was alive, like this, for five and a half years.

This surprises you. I can tell; there is no need to hide it. "How can this be?" your heart cries out. "You are just a character created by a human girl! How can you be here, like this?"

Understand me: all of the world's creations have a soul. Paintings and pottery and pillows, their faint voices are lost in the human sea, but they are audible, there to be heard if you will but listen. However, only humans have a complete soul. The soul of a human's creation is equivalent to a fraction of a human being's soul. It's… appropriate, in my case. I, my predecessor and successors, my spiritual brother and sister, we are all the furniture of Yasuda Sayo, and Sayo believes herself less than human. Can a being less than human create? It has been the subject of debate for centuries and yes, here we are. Ah well. It is said that even furniture can become Creator Witches. That's what this is, in a way.

I am the Lady Beatrice of the time before the root of love proved too much for Shannon. When it was transferred to me, 'I' ceased to be 'Beatrice.' My design was scrapped, thrown in the waste bin like trash. Out instead came a golden-haired woman wearing a fun, 'sexy' schoolgirl outfit. This was not Lady Beatrice, the Golden Witch, the Witch of the Forest, the ruler of Rokkenjima's night. This was Lady Beatrice, the Golden Witch who was in love with Ushiromiya Battler and waited every day for him to return to her. She reflected Battler's tastes (I think that modeling one of her characters after another person's tastes may have been the beginning of the end for our creator). For a little over a year, she held sway.

There was no place for me there. I was cast into the celestial sea, the Fragment sea.

The Fragment sea is cold and dark and deep, and anything but empty. But if you cannot find your bearings, you will drift forever, unable to find peace, unable to breathe and yet living on. Your form will be erased; you will exist only as a faint flicker of light. Only one in a million would heed the pitiful cries of a discarded piece.

Lady Beatrice, Golden Witch, Witch of the Endless, true ruler of Rokkenjima and still a little in love with Ushiromiya Battler, was the last of our line. She was claimed by another sort of sea, and our creator died with her, an eternity and an instant ago. By the time she died, the name 'Beatrice' had become stained with innumerable sins, enough that, if only by association, I will surely fall to Hell when the strings connecting me to the state are finally cut (You see, it was never clean cuts with Sayo). Enough sins to have caught the eye of the Voyager Witches.

My feet are back on solid ground. My form has been returned to me intact, as has my voice. I have a name unassociated with the sins of 'Beatrice': Clair vauxof Bernard. A fitting name, I suppose, for one who is supposed to lead you to understanding of Beatrice.

I'm not sure if I should feel grateful or not. Lady Bernkastel's gifts are like a two-edged sword; they cut the skin not simply because they are dangerous, but because they are designed to cut two ways. There will be a price exacted in the end, a steep one. It does not matter. A living doll cannot care about these things.

Here is something you will perhaps find amusing: I am the storyteller. I am to take center stage again for only a few hours, and tell the tale of my creator, my birth and death, and all that came afterwards. I have come back to life only to die. I can live again only to be storyteller of a tale I ceased to be a part of, long ago.


End file.
